UNIADEX

Adopts agentless security countermeasures without the decreased performance common in VDI

Challenges

As a member of the Nihon Unisys Group, UNIADEX develops a full lineup of services related to the integration, operation management, and maintenance of ICT systems. In recent years, the company has strengthened its cloud business, offering cloud federation services that support the application of multiple cloud services. The company has an excellent reputation amongst its clients and has been ranked #1* in Nikkei Computer’s customer satisfaction survey in the “Services Related to System Operation (IT Services Companies)” category for two consecutive years.

Needless to say, the company has made full use of various aspects of IT to improve business. One such example is the deployment of VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) to virtualize the company’s desktops when it had issues with use of its PCs. “In addition to our office PCs, we gave notebooks to our salespeople, SEs, and customer support personnel as they often work remotely. However, it was necessary to place restrictions on data usage outside the office for security reasons. And even though we maintained safety, we still had problems with complicated workflows,” says Takeyasu Oiwa.

For exapmle, it was company policy that data must not remain on a computer after it was used outside the office. Taking all the steps needed to comply with this internal regulation was extremely time consuming.

“The VDI allows us to access our company PC environment and use the data we require at any time. And because no data remains on the devices, we are able to reduce the risk of data leakage and the accompanying UNIADEX, Ltd. damage from data loss and theft,” continues Oiwa.

Solution

Based on this requirement, the company adopted VMware® Horizon View™ as its VDI platform and selected Trend Micro’s Trend Micro Deep Security as a security product.

Deep Security provides agentless security countermeasures and is natively compatible with VMware vShield Endpoint, which offloads antivirus and malware functions. “Products that install agents on each virtual PC concentrate processing when distributing files and performing virus scans, increasing the load on servers and causing performance to deteriorate. In addition to providing agentless countermeasures, the combination of Deep Security and Horizon View controls server load effectively by automatically coordinating schedules instead of processing simultaneously. This enabled us to maintain the appropriate responsiveness,” explains Itaru Sano. In addition, the high level of compatibility between Deep Security and Horizon View was achieved much earlier than similar products from the other companies. “Compatibility becomes even better with each new version of Deep Security. We feel that if you deploy them at the same time, you’ll be able to use them immediately, without any need to perform complicated configuration operations,” says UNIADEX’s Kenji Sukegawa. Furthermore, “[because] system configuration is simple, it’s also easy to standardize operations,” adds Yukiko Ogawa.

The company is also highly impressed with the solution’s great scalability and ability to maintain continuous security logs. There is no need to take the time to manually install Deep Security on each individual virtual PC as it is added. When a virtual PC is added, Deep Security automatically recognizes and protects it. This contributes to improved VDI scalability by enabling compatibility with increasing numbers of virtual PCs with a minimum workload.

“Our company views the continuity of security logs as extremely important. Traditional antivirus products cannot maintain the continuity of logs when rebuilding virtual PCs, so it becomes impossible to attain previous logs. Because Deep Security manages logs on a central management server, we can immediately verify consecutive logs, which is useful when searching for the cause of an incident as soon as one occurs,” explains Sukegawa.

"A major issue of a VDI deployment is the maintenance of performance. As Deep Security is agentless, it is an essential security product for VDI deployments."

Itaru Sano,
UNIADEX, Ltd.

Results

UNIADEX is currently running approximately 2000 virtual PCs on its VDI. By using the same PC environment inside and outside the company’s offices, employees no longer have to copy and delete data every time they leave the office as they had to previously, causing great increases in efficiency. Additionally, because there is no longer a need to use different in-house and external PCs, the company has reduced its number of PCs by approximately one-third. “Because we have been able to strengthen security, we have also been able to allow remote employees to use their personal PCs, something that was previously prohibited,” says Oiwa.

The company has already started to provide new services using the experience it has gained from this project. “We are providing a variety of services to support efficient VDI operation with our ‘Remote Operating Services (virtual desktop operating support).' We are confident that it will greatly reduce the workload of our Information Systems Department, and will improve the level of our services to users,” says Ogawa.

The company promotes the combination of Horizon View and Deep Security as a “UNIADEX Recommended Configuration” for VDI. “We feel that the combination is able to provide a secure VDI with optimal performance for a minimum labor cost,” says Sukegawa.

UNIADEX intends to share the expertise it has gained from this project with various members of its group, and will use it to present, construct, and provide operational support to actively develop other VDI-related projects. “Needs related to VDIs have risen to the next level. We want to unite as a company to support our clients’ VDI usage,” says Sano.

The company also has high expectations of Trend Micro, and for Deep Security to provide VDI with optimum security countermeasures. “In order to provide the most appropriate solution, it is essential to cooperate closely with our partners. We have joined forces with Trend Micro to provide our clients with high quality, secure VDI,” Sukegawa concludes enthusiastically.

"We not only built a secure and highly convenient PC environment, but we also achieved an infrastructure that can become a model case for services to our customers."